Unverified Voracity Lifts Kicking Mules Comment Count

Brian

The new logos are here! The new logos are maize! The new logo's maize will have nothing to do with the color of the athletic uniforms! The logo:

ru_130605_blockm[1]

Modification of this in any way is punishable by death. They also invented a new font for this, which is called "Steve." Steve the font.

Watch it before the NSA T3Media finds you. 50 interceptions:

Entrance of the Lambs. Good news for the baseball team, as Jackson Lamb (P/Civil War general) has reportedly turned down a third-round offer from MLB and will matriculate this fall. Lamb eventually went in the 20th round to Texas, so unless Texas ends up with a ton of extra money by not signing their top picks—baseball got serious about their slotting regulations recently—Lamb will anchor Erik Bakich's first recruiting class.

Over the weekend, Lamb led his Bedford team to a regional title. I'll let Ryan Autullo take it from here:

In exhausting both his pitch count and a mouthy opposing lineup, Jackson Lamb lifted the Kicking Mules to a 3-1 regional semifinal win over Taylor Kennedy. …

Lamb encountered control issues for the second game in a row, walking six batters and wracking up a whopping 146 pitches — exactly twice as many as Kuhr’s 73. Nevertheless, he didn’t allow a run until the bottom of the seventh, at which time Bedford was in front 3-0. An antagonistic Kennedy dugout made a point early and often to try to rattle Michigan’s Gatorade player of the year, mocking Lamb’s failure to locate his fastball and breaking into vociferous chatter typically seen in softball.

Well, I never.

Three more recruits went late and shouldn't be a threat to sign, but junior Michael O'Neill (Yes That O'Neill) got drafted by the Yankees in the third and is probably out the door.

If you get in, you see this. Despite featuring lot of non-regulation Ms, this business tugged a heart string or two:

Bring a fan to orientation. Trust me.

This changes nothing. Indiana made the College World Series, marking the first time since Michigan did it that a Big Ten team has made it to Omaha. This is what a cell phone looked like back then:

CellPhone1984[1]

on the left, probably

It was 1984.

Meanwhile it has been perfect baseball weather in Ann Arbor for much of the past month, and Fisher sits empty when it could be selling me hot dogs and giving the BTN something other than Bret Bielema fishing tips to televise. The history of NCAA baseball has been Southern teams flipping the northern bits of the country off, and since that's never going to change the Big Ten should just play their own game with 25 scholarships and wood bats. Cheese 'em off real good, that would.

I mean, they could use the money cannon for something cool for once.

Ana-what-now? Apparently Trey Burke's pending, minor draft fall is being driven by data-conscious NBA teams:

"Sources say a number of teams that rely heavily on analytics have Carter-Williams rated higher than Burke," Ford wrote. "While both players look good in the various analytical approaches teams employ, Carter-Williams is coming up at No. 1 and No. 2 overall on several teams' reports. For teams that value analytics, that's a big deal.

"Finally, teams are always looking for upside in the lottery. Carter-Williams has extraordinary size for his position. He is a terrific athlete. He sees the floor as well as any point guard in the draft. His weaknesses -- primarily his shaky jumper -- are the only thing holding him back from being a top-5 pick right now."

Those numbers must be pretty advanced to be able to rank Carter-Williams over Burke, who finished second in the kPOY rankings because he was a huge-usage, huge-assist-rate, low-TO, high-eFG guard. IE: he did everything you could do well. Carter-Williams didn't even finish in the top 500(!) in ORtg because there aren't any barns in upstate New York he hasn't flung a ball past, shooting 44%/29% despite putting up only 20% of Syracuse shots while he's on the court.

Can any defensive ability top that massive gap? I get the upside thing—if MCW learns to shoot he will probably be a better NBA player than Burke despite their college numbers—but isn't that a huge leap to make? How many rhetorical questions can I stuff in a single paragraph? Four?

Trey is just like well, like, that's your opinion, man.

Old school, and OLD SCHOOL. Dooley catches up with a guy who uses "aught-three" to mean 1903:

“My dad played football at [M.A.C.] in the class of aught three,” Drake told me.   “It wasn’t intercollegiate football; it was class team football.  They beat each other up without headgear on the banks of the Red Cedar.”

Yeah, he went to State, but he was in town over the weekend for the Fantasy Camp. Here's Gerald Drake meeting Hoke:

1Hoke_thumb1[1]

Okay, Bleacher Report, okay. Even though you still pop up an exhortation for me to subscribe to your newsletter on literally every misbegotten visit to your website, I will link you for this from Miami commit KC McDermott:

AK: What's the Urban Meyer story?

KM: The Urban Meyer thing was just funny to me. He came to my school a week after I told his assistant that I wasn't even interested in them. I told him no to his face, and it's got to be one of the top five reactions of someone ever. His facial expression was just so funny. My coach was tearing up and had to go in his office to laugh.

AK: Talk more about coach Meyer's face when you told him no. Was he mad, upset?

KM: More like the state of shock where the guy has literally never been told no in his life. It literally looked like a kid the first time you tell him 'no, you can't do something.' It looked like he was a baby about to cry. It was so funny.

If you find a recruit willing to describe Dantonio as "about as personable as a rock, and not a shiny rock you'd find in a river, but like, a boring rock, like some limestone or something" I will link you again, Bleacher Report.

Etc.: My mom would get along with Laura Hoke. The sad status quo for ND-M. Michigan is a dog versus both MSU and OSU early. What Johns Hopkins means for B10 lax. Hype video. Surprise: the Big Ten won't go DIII if O'Bannon wins. Goodbye, Denard.

Comments

dragonchild

June 10th, 2013 at 8:19 PM ^

There's always going to be some art added to the science because you can't always rely on production vs. college competition as an indicator.  I'm more a football man, but there are plenty of guys who dominated college play with gimmicks that don't work in the NFL.  Tebow, for example, was unstoppable because he was a spread option QB with the strength of a tight end.  Well, that might work on Florida International but even when defenses hadn't figured out how to prepare for it, the results at the NFL level were mediocre at best.  OTOH, Randy Moss played against weak competition but had a productive (if controversial) NFL career because the tools he had work at all levels.

So, the CW here is that while Burke is the better college player, his talent has a lower ceiling that won't translate to production in the NBA.  Not that I agree, but the draft has always been about reaches.  A pre-polished product may be more productive on average, but signing a "blue-chip" usually isn't a cap-busting proposition even if you don't get dibs.  But if you can somehow turn someone with the requisite physical talent into a polished product, you get a HoFer for far less than if someone else did the polishing -- if you get such a guy at all, because NBA stars really don't move around that much.  It doesn't even matter that this is almost never how it works out because it's the ONLY way it works out.  To put things in perspective, how did LeBron wind up in Cleveland in the first place?  They drafted him.  No way he winds up there if they took a pass because of his age, takes an Old Faithful prospect and approaches him later as a free agent.  OTOH, the Knicks got excellent production out of JR Smith for what they paid him.

That's the logic, anyway.  But the logic can be horribly wrong, and in Burke's case he faced pretty much every kind of defense the best college teams could try to throw at him so I wouldn't think of his polish as a negative.  I also think the way the NBA scouts point guards is terribly inaccurate in a lot of ways.

Don

June 10th, 2013 at 10:51 PM ^

The only mention about typography in the article at http://www.ur.umich.edu/update/archives/130605/branding states:

"Below are the words "University of Michigan" set in a custom-designed typeface named, appropriately, Victors."

In the Style Guide itself, it also refers to the font named Victors": http://vpcomm.umich.edu/brand/style-guide

Which article refers to the font named "Steve"?

NoVaWolverine

June 11th, 2013 at 9:47 AM ^

As a Mavericks fan, am I too naive to hope that so many teams will be THAT dumb, and Trey will fall to the Mavs at #13? The Mavs are one of those analytic-obsessed teams and it wouldn't surprise me if they liked MCW better (DraftExpress.com has them taking Carter-Williams in their latest mock). But I sure wouldn't mind seeing Trey working the pick-and-roll with Dirk -- would be a nice consolation prize if the Mavs lose out in the Chris Paul sweepstakes.

Erik_in_Dayton

June 10th, 2013 at 4:59 PM ^

When you're looking for Burke's wallet in the bag, it's the one that says "Bad MFer."  Carter-Williams' doesn't say that.  That is all the "analytics" one needs, I think. 

ArbitraryUserName

June 10th, 2013 at 5:32 PM ^

So the logo changed like this (new one is wider):

In conclusion, months of hard work by whomever it is the University pays for this stuff can be summarized as:

 

Michigan used ENHANCE HORIZONTALLY!!
It's not very effective···

 

AC1997

June 10th, 2013 at 6:02 PM ^

Don't forget that most NBA offenses rely heavily on the pick and roll, which Burke perfected this season and can punish with his jump shot. Teams will just sag off MCW.

Also, does it matter that MCW has never played man to man defense?

I would like to hear an NBA expert tell me why MCW is not just Darius Morris. I love Morris, but he can't crack the rotation of a team starved for a PG and that wants to push tempo.

gwkrlghl

June 10th, 2013 at 6:28 PM ^

is that the B1G is positioning itself well to be a power in what, I believe, will very soon be the #3 college sport both in terms of popularity and TV viewers. On one level or another, everyone in the conference who fields lacrosse is good or very good at it except for Michigan. And I think we can expect Michigan to be good in the not so distant future

The B1G may very well be the power conference for lacrosse when all is said and done

However, I am offended by this:

If your league could Alabama's football program, or Kansas' basketball program, or Minnesota's hockey program, you're making the best addition possible.

Don't be so modest Tim, Michigan's program is better than Minnesota's

zeda_p

June 10th, 2013 at 6:50 PM ^

I like the logo composition overall, but the "Victors" font -- with its varying thickness in letters -- is a bit complicated. They also need to put some spacing in between the letters of "MICHIGAN". Way too tight.

But what do I know.. I was only trained in the M A&D art school.

 

c-man

June 10th, 2013 at 8:25 PM ^

I love the ref in the Woodson interception. He totally looks like he's thinking OH MY GOD THAT WAS THE MOST AMAZING THING I'VE EVER SEEN!

ThoseWhoStayUofM

June 10th, 2013 at 9:10 PM ^

"The academics are out of control—[The University of Miami has] one of the best engineering programs in the country." ~KC McDermott



ummm... US News and World Report pegs Miami at #116 in engineering.  Snake oil sailsman says what?

Bando Calrissian

June 11th, 2013 at 12:26 AM ^

If you dig that M video and you really want to really get all nostalgic for our dear Ann Arbor, check out the song Garrison Keillor sang during the second half of last week's A Prairie Home Companion broadcast from Hill.

It's in segment #3, the song is titled "Beautiful" on the script. Just click on the sound link. Starts at around the 1:13:30 mark.

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2013/06/01/

Not going to lie, room got really, really dusty when that came over my radio.

Chuck Norris

June 11th, 2013 at 11:11 AM ^

My favorite interception of all time is the Tommy Rees one in the 2010 game (#48 in the video). Specifically, when the receiver falls down, tries to get back up, and gets plastered by Kovacs.